Navigating Challenges in Energy Infrastructure: Insights from Constructor Magazine

I recently read the November/December 2025 issue of Constructor Magazine (published by Associated General Contractors). This issue is a valuable resource for anyone managing capital programs today, and not just because of the construction coverage.

Current Challenges in Capital Programs

Tariffs are disrupting procurement processes. Workforce shortages are delaying nearly half of all projects. Data center construction is accelerating at a pace that strains every trade in the country. Furthermore, contractors are formalizing processes they once handled informally, as the cost of errors has increased significantly.

For owners of capital programs, these challenges are not theoretical. They impact your schedule, capital budget, and board reporting. The real question is not whether risks exist; it is whether your program governance is structured to manage these risks before they escalate into problems.

The Numbers Are Clear

According to the AGC/NCCER Workforce Survey cited throughout the issue, 92 percent of construction firms are struggling to fill open positions. Forty-five percent report project delays tied to labor shortages. Additionally, 16 percent have experienced delays or cancellations due to tariff-driven cost increases.

When an EPC contractor cannot staff adequately, when transformer lead times extend beyond twelve months, and when steel and aluminum costs surge due to tariffs, the impact is immediate. The contractor's constraints become your constraints as the program owner.

Strong owner-side program management does not eliminate these risks, but it makes them visible early enough to take action.

What the Data Center Surge Means for Energy Infrastructure

One significant theme in the issue is the surge in data center construction. Major companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, and OpenAI have committed extraordinary capital to this buildout. Permitting has been streamlined by executive order, and the demand for power is increasing faster than utilities planned for.

Data centers currently consume about 4.4 percent of U.S. electricity, a figure the Department of Energy projects will reach between 6.7 and 12 percent by 2028. Trimble's director of industry workflow summarized it well:

"I don't think the word 'surging' even begins to describe it. There are dozens and dozens of projects going on right now, and mega-data centers are on the rise."

-- Duane Gleason, Director of Industry Workflow, Trimble

For utilities and infrastructure owners, this demand translates into simultaneous capital programs: new transmission corridors, substation expansions, generation interconnections, and distribution reinforcements. These are not isolated projects; they are portfolios under schedule pressure. Most owner organizations were not designed to manage this level of concurrency with their existing tools and structures.

Contractors Are Tightening Their Controls. Are Owners?

One instructive part of the issue describes how leading general contractors are now conducting formal reviews of subcontractor financial health and workload capacity before making awards. Maria DiTommaso, Senior Risk and Contract Manager at Bond Brothers, explained their approach:

"We require subcontractors to submit a work-in-progress schedule so we can see what they're doing currently and what they have ahead. We want to ensure that if we award the business, we're not going to overload them."

-- Maria DiTommaso, Senior Risk and Contract Manager, Bond Brothers

Owners should reflect on how they evaluate contractor capacity across their portfolios.

In my experience working with utilities and cooperatives, vendor performance management at the owner level is often informal. Feedback is relationship-driven, and performance information is not systematically captured in the project management information system. Lessons learned do not reliably inform future procurement decisions.

This gap can be costly in a market like this one. When vendor risk is not quantified, early warning signals are missed. What could have been a simple schedule adjustment can quickly escalate into a default event.

The Governance Problem

Program management is the discipline of organizing projects to collectively advance an organization's strategy. It requires more than just tracking cost and schedule; it necessitates alignment across procurement, engineering, finance, operations, and risk management.

Without structured governance, risk management becomes reactive. Spreadsheets often sit outside the PMIS. Portfolio reviews occur quarterly, and escalations are informal. In a stable environment, this may be manageable. However, in a constrained labor market with tariff volatility and competition for materials from hyperscale construction programs, it is not.

The issue also references an estimate of nearly one trillion dollars in annual productivity loss across the construction industry. This figure reflects the cumulative cost of fragmented data, informal processes, and governance gaps. While some inefficiency originates from contractors, much of it stems from the owner side, where program structures are insufficient for the scale and complexity of current capital programs.

What THAMPICO Does

THAMPICO is a program and project management consultancy focused on energy infrastructure, utilities, and capital programs. We work on the owner side. Our role is to strengthen execution capacity so capital programs perform predictably under pressure. Our consultants have supported over one billion dollars in capital programs across utilities, cooperatives, and public agencies.

Our work typically includes four areas:

• PMO Design and Deployment: We clarify governance structures, escalation pathways, reporting standards, and portfolio visibility. We help organizations transform a PMO from a reporting function into an execution function.

• PMIS Implementation and Optimization: We centralize RFIs, submittals, cost data, change orders, vendor performance metrics, and risk registers into one operational system. Most organizations find that Procore, e-Builder, or Projectmates, when properly configured for their workflows, eliminate the data silos that hinder proactive governance.

• Risk Framework Development: We establish quantitative risk registers tied to schedule and financial exposure. This shifts the focus from static logs reviewed periodically to active risk management that supports board and regulatory reporting.

• Vendor Performance Integration: We embed measurable performance criteria directly into project workflows, ensuring that future procurement decisions are informed by actual data, not just institutional memory.

  
  

Strong Owner Governance Benefits Contractors Too

Strong owner-side governance is not adversarial to contractors; it enhances project efficiency for everyone involved. Clear scope definition reduces change order disputes. Timely decisions prevent schedule drift. Structured reporting improves transparency on both sides. When the owner can accurately read and respond to project data, operations run more smoothly.

We have also observed that owners with mature PMOs tend to be better clients for their contractors. Subcontractor default events, cost overruns, and disputed change orders are more common on programs where owner governance is weak. Better owner governance reduces these friction points for everyone.

If you are a contractor or construction manager who regularly collaborates with utility or infrastructure owners, and you are experiencing these challenges from the other side, we are eager to discuss that. We actively pursue referral relationships with contractors, insurers, and advisory firms that serve overlapping clients.

Three Forces Owners Cannot Afford to Ignore in 2026

Tariff volatility and supply chain fragility are not temporary issues. They are reshaping how procurement works for capital programs. Labor scarcity is persistent and will not resolve on a timeline that benefits current programs. Additionally, the competition for your contractors' attention from hyperscale data center programs is not going away.

Owners who invest in program governance infrastructure now will be better positioned to manage these conditions. Those who continue with informal structures will find that the margin for error has disappeared.

The construction industry will always carry risk. The differentiator is not who faces it; it is who builds the organizational capability to manage it consistently.

If you are leading a utility, cooperative, or public agency capital program and the conditions described in this article resonate with you, we welcome a conversation about your governance structure and options for strengthening it.

By Sirous Thampi, Founding Partner, THAMPICO LLC

ProgramManagement EnergyInfrastructure CapitalPrograms Utilities RiskManagement PMIS AGC Construction